CVFH, Morse’s Farm Tibberton. We were joined by Bristol, South Wales and Bath sabs. Sett checkers were also inland first thing with a thorough knowledge of the area. First off was Jamie Griffith’s land (some of you may remember him as a leading pro cull farmer) and shortly they had hunted a fox to the golf course near Huntley upsetting a sheep farmer in the process. Clearly they were not meant to be there….what has Simon scatterpack done now, we asked ourselves. Then lo and behold out comes Mark Meladay (huntsman of the Ledbury) carrying the horn. Clearly Simon is still recovering from last week’s tumble and Mark is enjoying some extra hunting. And so the CVFH field was considerably bigger with Ledbury supporters all over the place including their terriermen. Not sure if the CVFH knew what hit them but some Ross Harriers support were out too. The lanes around Tibberton became unusually busy as the day wore on.
Sabs kept an eye on them all day moving them on forming pincer movements. At one point a fox came away from where the terriermen were and to say that they looked decidedly shifty is an understatement. The line of this fox and one that passed earlier was liberally sprayed with citronella. The terriermen and other supporters from various hunts went off fairly quickly once they noted sabs. especially the idiot who tried to holloa.
They finished in Highnam woods an RSPB nature reserve. At this time Mark’s son and his friend decided it would be fun to throw a firecracker into a beehive so 2 sabs got stung. Cruel to the bees and this could have been very serious if anyone had been allergic to bee stings.
We received no less than 5 calls regarding 5 different regarding hunts in the three counties whilst we were out. Some of these were duly attended by local anti hunt folk. Please keep the information coming in. Last week we received news that hounds were on road A44 at Whitbourne Worcestershire last Saturday lunchtime and that one had been hit. We cannot always respond but will carry on recording and passing on to other groups when possible.
After reading our report from the day, a supporter of ours contacted the RSPB about the hunt being on their land and received this reply:
Dear Charles,
Thank you for your e-mail which our enquiries team passed on to me.
Thank you for bringing this to our attention. I can confirm I was not aware the CVFH had been on the reserve and we have not given permission for them to do so. I was on site yesterday afternoon and saw there had been horses through, so it is useful to know the explanation.
Kind regards,
Hannah
Hannah Booth
Site Manager
We weren’t going to name Mark Meladay’s son, Sam, as being one of the two culprits regarding the bee hive damage, but he obviously felt the need to draw attention to himself and name himself by posting a highly amusing comment on our facebook report… and then, when we failed to respond to him, he ‘liked’ his own comment…
